The proliferation of high-speed communication networks has resulted in vast amounts of digital data becoming available for analysis by remote resources that may be located at distant physical locations, yet enabled to receive and provide effective services due to their connection to the high-speed communication networks. In step with the increased availability of information through the high-speed communication networks are the improvements being made to applications that rely on such information.
As the capabilities of these applications are updated and improved, new versions of the applications are tested to ensure they perform as expected. To confirm the performance of the new application versions, parallel testing is performed to compare performance of the new applications against the performance of prior, legacy versions. Parallel testing involves inputting a common sample dataset into both the legacy and new versions of the application and comparing the results produced by both versions. The parallel testing may also be applied to test new processes that are included in the new application version. Any detected differences in the results are then further examined to determine whether variances exist in the new application versions, or whatever other processes are being compared.